Posted by MikeT23 on 1/1/2011 3:00:00 PM (view original):JTR, while much of what you say is correct, it has to be more than just a "bit of bad luck". And swapping out one park in my division really doesn't cut it. That's 5 more games and, on the whole, the league ERA went down .028.

I'll accept that some of it could just be a "random result". However, there's a gorilla in the room dressed as 5 pitchers, with virtually no rating changes over three seasons, that got worse as the +/- play differential got worse. We can't say "That's not a gorilla" while he smacks us in the head.

True. I see it more as a, "they should have gotten worse, but not THAT much worse," sort of situation.

Fielding percentage in .983 so it's a little worse than the previous seasons. However, we have 27 + plays and 2 - plays. None of the 5 pitchers have better ratings(Etherton lost a point here and there).

Damn. I thought this was an interesting look into the game. It's not often that you can look at a group of 5 players with virtually no rating changes under a similar set of circumstances(save one item) for four consecutive seasons and see a drastic change in results. Yet no one appears to be interested.

Posted by MikeT23 on 12/30/2010 10:11:00 AM (view original):I will assume you are part of the nerd faction.

I'll try to break it down for you in a language you understand. .250 is considered mediocre, .300 is considered good. The difference between the two is about 1 hit PER WEEK over the course of a season. Blooper, broken bat dribbler, poor jump by a fielder, etc, etc. can turn a player from an also ran to an All-Star in a season. An AB, game, week, season are all small sample sizes.

You can work with career averages and get an idea of probabilities but you can't figure out the outcome. Because the outcome is from that small sample size of an AB or game.

That's why the game of baseball can't be wrapped up in nice, tidy number by statnerds.

Says the guy who spends his days following imaginary players whose skills are broken into ratings and statistics. Baseball is beauty and math

Posted by MikeT23 on 12/30/2010 10:11:00 AM (view original):I will assume you are part of the nerd faction.

I'll try to break it down for you in a language you understand. .250 is considered mediocre, .300 is considered good. The difference between the two is about 1 hit PER WEEK over the course of a season. Blooper, broken bat dribbler, poor jump by a fielder, etc, etc. can turn a player from an also ran to an All-Star in a season. An AB, game, week, season are all small sample sizes.

You can work with career averages and get an idea of probabilities but you can't figure out the outcome. Because the outcome is from that small sample size of an AB or game.

That's why the game of baseball can't be wrapped up in nice, tidy number by statnerds.

I agree with the point that you can do all the math you want but outcomes will often deviate from expectations, but i do believe that having a strong understanding of probabilities based on sufficient data can improve the odds of making good decisions. For example, how many threads have we seen about "which SS should i play, the glove or the stick". The obvious response is the one that helps your team the most. In that calculation, the offensive impact isn't too difficult to determine, (roughly, of course), what's harder is to estimate the defensive contribution. If you can get a decent handle on how many runs one guy will save versus another in the field it will help in deciding which player brings more to the table.

Posted by MikeT23 on 2/1/2011 8:19:00 AM (view original):Damn. I thought this was an interesting look into the game. It's not often that you can look at a group of 5 players with virtually no rating changes under a similar set of circumstances(save one item) for four consecutive seasons and see a drastic change in results. Yet no one appears to be interested.

I've built most of my teams on this premise, Mike. I have also found that good defense can be had relatively cheap, until other folks discover the same. The downside is that it can be frustrating to be on the wrong end of a lot of 2-1 games.

It's really just a change of a couple of players. Positions I wouldn't think of as "important". I upgraded in RF. An aging player last season created some negative plays but this season's RF is just average(3 errors, 3 + plays, 0 - plays). LF was moved to 1B. The new LF has the same line(3,3 0) as my new RF but it beats the hell out of 3,0,14 from last season. My old LF moved to 1B and has 0,0,0 which is a pretty solid upgrade over 3.2,6. Anyway, the starters from RF/LF/1B last season produced 31 negative plays. I've got 0 from the three spots this season and the 5 pitchers are hugely improved.